


Straight to Hell, Boys

by diefleder_tey



Category: Arashi (Band), Kanjani8 (Band)
Genre: Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 04:16:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diefleder_tey/pseuds/diefleder_tey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yoko and Sho are pros by this point - they know the drill.  When NTV asks them to film a segment in an abandoned hospital for a ghost story special, they know what to expect.  Except Yoko quickly discovers that some stories are worse than others - especially those you can't escape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2013 je-squickfic exchange (original can be found [here](http://je-squickfic.livejournal.com/39608.html)).

The van jumped and rocked over stones on a path that would have been worn down had it seen any sort of regular traffic. As it was, few had ventured out that way in the past fifty years - and it was now Yoko's distinct _honor_ to do as much.

Honor wasn't the right word, nor was pleasure. Annoyance, more like it. But there wasn't a lot he could do about it. Someone once told him: if you keep tempting fate, eventually fate will win. He couldn't recall who, and the more he thought about it, the more he realized it was probably something he had himself said. And how right he had been - after years of dodging every "haunted house" and scary location tv shoot thrown his way, NTV finally had his number.

His and Sho's. Yoko glanced to the side at his fellow idol, who was busy reading a print-out about the locale. That wasn't Yoko's style of television - going in cold allowed for what he felt was his genuine response. And more importantly, he didn't feel particularly inclined to spend the silent, rocky van ride reading about various medical procedures from the 1950s. Of all the places in the world, NTV had to send him to the only one worse than a hospital: an _abandoned_ hospital.

"Interesting," Sho commented. "Rumor has it that apparently there was a new surgical room installed before it shut down. State of the art, finished days before their last patient was admitted supposedly."

"Great," Yoko muttered.

"Why would you pay that much money to have an expensive facility renovated when you know you're going to shut the doors permanently?" he continued. "Maybe they didn't realize, but you'd think you'd be aware of any financial issues before buying new equipment."

"People do things for weird reasons," Yoko replied.

Sho thought for a moment before smiling at him. "Right?"

The van started to slow down as the building came into sight - or, rather, what was left of it. The camera crew was already there, boom mic out and ready, the staff uncurling cords. It was for some annual special - ghost stories in the studio with a panel of celebrities - and Sho and Yoko had been asked to film a VTR. Yoko knew exactly what that meant: NTV's people there early to prep, two Johnny's asked to investigate an abandoned hospital, even the celebrity ghost storyteller Inagawa Junji on hand. He was walking into a trap. A series of underlit rooms and jump scares designed to catch them both off guard for maximum entertainment. And worse yet, he was pretty sure Sho was the type to get wrapped up in whatever was happening. He could see it now: some staff member getting the jump on them and Yoko yelling in response, sending Sho into a tailspin of amplified scaredy-cat reactions that would only put Yoko more on edge until finally they'd be stupidly afraid of even the most obvious set-ups. And it'd be brilliant for viewers to watch.

Yoko slid down in his seat more, rolling his eyes at the thought. It'd be great - and he'd hate every minute of it.

Hina should have been there, he thought. Hina had more NTV tie-ins than he did. Hina had more to promote. Probably too much, hence being too busy. Yoko wasn't the type to turn down a network offer, but as he stepped out of the van and stood in front of the caved-in entrance to the hospital, he found himself wondering what was so good about being that eager to be on tv.

The staff had prepared an area for the three of them to sit down, with Inagawa's back to the ruins - forcing Yoko and Sho to stare at it as he explained the location's haunted past. "This hospital was well known in the region for taking tuberculosis patients in the 50s," he told them. "Because it was isolated and remote, it was ideal to send people to. See, the disease was still unmanageable until the middle part of the decade and this was a convenient solution. It was abandoned at the end of the 60s, when more widespread treatment was available - but thrill seekers have been known to come here to explore. Some have taken pictures of equipment that experts say didn't exist prior to the 21st century." Inagawa paused and then looked over to the AD who gave an okay signal. "Do we need another take?"

"That's it?!" Yoko asked.

Inagawa shrugged. "Many people would have died here, I'm sure not all of them happily. Sometimes the location is enough."

"Maybe they're worried about scaring us too much?" Sho suggested.

"Fine. By the way, you should probably go in first."

"Me?!"

"We need a shot of you together in front of the entrance, please," the AD asked. "For a still."

Yoko gave one glance back, scrunching his face up. The paint on the sides was all chipped and worn, the wood slats that had been part of an overhang above the door scattered below - some cracked into several pieces, while a few precariously clung to their original frame. It mimicked the forest around it, with nails and pieces of glass covering paths like the leaves and branches covering the earth. The front door itself had been torn from its hinges and lay across the threshold like a barrier.

"Hold for 3, 2, 1," the AD directed. "Thank you. Now if you'll hold this, and-"

Sho took a small board from her, looking at the picture that had been pasted on it, and laughed. "You blew up an old Juniors' photo?"

Yoko grabbed it from him. "This is fifteen years old!"

"I'm surprised they're not just going to use footage from The Quiz Show 2 - maybe that's going to be added in post?" Sho mused.

"Twenty years old!"

"It was the first thing we could find," the AD apologized.

"Hey," Sho said, grabbing his sleeve. "Your face is rubbed out on this."

Yoko shut up to take a better look - there he was, in the third row with blonde hair and his fist pumped high in the sky. But Sho was right, someone had messed up when they enlarged the photo or picked a bad one to begin with - his face was unrecognizable. "Where'd they even get this?" He remembered all those photoshoots, a stampede of young Juniors lined up, trying to appeal to nameless, faceless, imaginary girls, hoping to make enough of an impression to last in the business. A lot of them didn't, and strangely enough, Yoko couldn't find anyone in the photo who had been left behind. Just Arashi, Kanjani8, Tackey and Tsubasa, Ikuta Toma, a few others - when had they even taken a picture like this? He couldn't remember such a prescient gathering, not at that age.

"Let's go in," Inagawa urged them, stepping cautiously through the undergrowth and waving them on.

"Please be careful," the AD advised them. "There may be dangerous debris around."

"Then why bring us here?" Yoko muttered.

The side of the hospital had been ripped open, its man-made guts strewn out into the trees. At some point something must have fallen on it, but not anything that Yoko could see. Perhaps it had been a too-strong wind during a storm. They stepped over crumbled rock and boards, slowly and carefully walking into what looked like a patient room - a lone chair before the door frame, its seat missing, and a bed covered in dust and roofing, a pipe somehow rammed down the middle of the mattress.

"This would have been a recovery room," Inagawa said, making his way through. "In the loosest sense."

"Wouldn't you take your family to a sanitarium if someone had tuberculosis?" Sho asked, pushing the chair to the side to clear the path. "Ow. If the disease still wasn't that treatable then, why send them here?"

"If you couldn't afford to transport your family member to a sanitarium…," Inagawa answered.

"That's true," Sho replied, holding his hand funny.

"What did you do?" Yoko asked.

"Nothing," Sho waved it off. "Just caught my palm on something when I moved the chair. It's nothing."

"Please be careful!" the AD repeated, far behind them and still outside of the hospital.

Inagawa paused at the doorway. "This leads out into the hallway where we'll find the surgical ward and a bathing area. If you'll step forward and head to your right, please."

Yoko glanced and met eyes with Sho - this was it. This was where they'd be left to their own devices, finding the hospital magically much cleaner inside so they could roam freely to run into the NTV extras waiting for them. He took a deep breath and headed through.

Nothing jumped out. Nothing yelled, "Boo!" There were no audio recordings playing creepy noises or broken dolls lying against baseboards. No creepy paintings conveniently left in sight. The same carpet of debris carried through the hallway and a broken set of double doors revealed the surgical area - exposed to sunlight and overgrowth from the lack of walls. The table was in disarray and the portable lights cracked.

Yoko stayed close to the door. Whenever whoever worked at this hospital had last left, they had literally run out - all the necessary tools were still arranged next to the table, ready for their procedures to begin.

"Ah!"

Yoko and Sho both whipped around, only to find that the exclamation had not come from a ghost or a victim, but the audio guy who was tapping his headphones and motioning that the feed had gone silent. "We have an equipment malfunction."

"Out of the hospital, please!" the command came.

"I can have it fixed within a few minutes," the audio guy apologized, bowing to everyone. The team started trudging out, one by one in a line. "We have everything in the recovery room," he continued, "so we don't have to start all over again."

"Please resume from there, then!" the AD called.

Yoko sighed as they piled back into the room. Inagawa excused himself; the crew headed to the vans. Sho looked around, inspecting the walls. "There's a door off to the side here," he said, pulling at a rusted panel. "It's not opening."

"They probably don't want us to go in there, yet," Yoko remarked, bringing out his cell phone. His battery was fairly low, but nothing that couldn't handle a little mindless gaming during a short delay. He leaned against the bed frame, quickly pulling back and dusting off his shirt, flicking off who knew what: mold, paint, spiderwebs. Part of the bed itself, at the other end from the impaled pipe, seemed relatively clean - still sheltered under the intact portion of the roofing. He tentatively sat at the edge, the very tip of his tailbone against the mattress so he wouldn't have to stand. The wind blew through the room, the only background music to accompany the noises from Yoko's phone.

"Probably," Sho replied, still looking around the edges. "I guess it's best that we don't go in anyway. It's probably been sealed since it was abandoned."

Yoko accidentally tapped the wrong thing, ending the game in disaster. "Do you think they washed the sheets after each patient?"

Sho shrugged. "I don't know, probab-"

"Nevermind," Yoko said, standing up like a lightning bolt, involuntarily shuddering at the idea.

"I'm sorry!"

They both turned their heads to look at the staff gathered outside, the audio man still apologizing. "It'll be fifteen minutes, I'll have to repair part of it!"

"It's been awhile since we've worked together," Sho said, returning his attention to the room. "We should go out to eat sometime, catch up. I heard you have work with Ohno-kun next week too, maybe we could all-"

Yoko wasn't listening. Fifteen minutes? His phone would last easily, but then he'd have that much less battery life to occupy himself on the van ride home. And besides, he knew better than to run it down completely. He sighed and flipped the phone shut. It was irritating. Everything had been irritating lately. Something was building up inside and he couldn't figure out what or why. He was punchier in interviews, more impatient with friends and coworkers. A sense of dissatisfaction was gnawing at him to the point that even in group meetings he had stopped giving his normal level of input and effort.

"How are things?"

Yoko looked up at Sho, mid-thought, glowering as he wallowed in all the irritation he had at being irrationally annoyed. Was this a slump? Was this what it was like after so many years, verging on the edge of some kind of emptiness?

"Sorry," Sho said, laughing quietly to ease the tension.

"Huh?" Yoko replied, finally paying attention. He sat back down on the edge of the bed, almost immediately jumping up and cursing himself for quickly forgetting. "Right, tuberculosis." This time when he moved, he inadvertently kicked away some of the fallen roofing, uncovering what looked like the edge of a book. Unlike everything else in the hospital, it seemed to have survived the years well.

"What's that?" Sho asked, bending down to pick it up. He quickly thumbed through the pages. "Some kind of journal."

" _Ho_?" Yoko said, squinting at the character written on the front, now partially obscured by Sho's fingers. " _Ho-kun_?"

"A few pages are stuck shut," Sho said, opening to the first available passage. "...train. He doesn't like it," Sho read aloud. "He used to complain about it every time we traveled to Tokyo for work. It's somehow cute. But I finally convinced him to come. I told him this hospital will help and it will be better this way. There's a river near the final stop."

"What a useless thing to point out," Yoko commented.

Sho continued. "I like the color, different from other rivers I've seen."

"Really useless."

"The cough won't go away. He says it rattles and it's wet like tissues caught in his throat. I know he's scared, not of the cough but of his family. The hospital is farther back in the forest, away from the trains and from the other towns. It's quiet out here and there is a good amount of sunlight. The staff is kind. They quickly took his bags and showed him to a room. The paint looks fairly new - white. It's soothing, probably. There's a window and a chair, so he's not abandoned by options and stuck with the bed. I told him I wouldn't leave. I was the only one who could bring him here. The nurses don't seem to mind, I told him. I have to stay, I tell him. His family couldn't afford to see him here or afford to catch his cough. Of course I have to stay. I don't think he believes me, but Yokoyama's such a worrier like that."

Yoko grabbed the book out of Sho's hands. "What?"

"That's what it says - Yokoyama," he answered, moving to stand beside Yoko to read over his shoulder. His toe scuffed against the ground, catching funny and causing him to trip. Yoko quickly grabbed his arm and kept him upright. Sho nodded, slightly embarrassed. Landing wouldn't have been pretty - he was heading straight for the piping in the bed. An outstretched arm might have rammed right into the rusty edge.

"Again?" Yoko barked. "Are you _trying_ to hurt yourself?"

"No!"

Yoko turned his attention back to the journal. "...but Yokoyama's such a worrier like that. He's pale now, paler than normal." He dropped the journal to his side and made a face. "This is the worst."

"Ah, that's not _Ho-kun_ ," Sho pointed out, lifting Yoko's arm to get a better look at the front of the book. "Not with the _-da_ after it, that's read as Yasuda."

"I know how to read 'Yasuda.'" Yoko stuck his chin out in annoyance. This was too much. "Yasuda? This is supposed to be Yasu's journal? ...NTV is the worst."

Sho shrugged. "Yokoyama and Yasuda aren't rare surnames?"

Yoko started to skip ahead in the journal. "Is one of the doctors named Sakurai? Maybe they meet another patient who magically goes by the name of MatsuJun? Lemme guess, he's nearsighted and shows his affection by pushing people into walls."

"You think the staff planted it?"

"And there's a cat that does nothing but eats and sleeps named Ohkura."

"I'm glad you said I was a doctor," Sho commented quietly. "It could be anyone's, it looks too old to be planted."

"They aged it!" Yoko opened up the middle and started pointing at the handwriting. "These words are weird, of course they had Yasu write it! We were supposed to find it and that's what makes us scared. They probably have some doctored photos of us as patients here too." He pulled his cellphone back out, immediately punching buttons, almost too fast to think through the spellings of the words he wanted to say.

_Oi! Yasu! You traitor! When did you have time to write this journal for NTV?!_

"I'm sorry!" came the voice of the audio man again. "The boom mic just...won't work. I'll have pin mics ready for everyone within five minutes."

Yoko glared as he hit "send" on his phone. The absolute worst.

"Well?" Sho asked.

"Hm?"

"What'd they make him write?" Sho prodded, pointing at the journal. "I'm assuming Yokoyama was the patient in this room?"

"Oh," Yoko said, turning his attention back to the book. He'd always had some difficulty with kanji and katakana, but the entries all looked accessible - perfectly tailored to avoid his weaknesses. Another smoking gun. "He's pale now, paler than normal…"

 

~~~~~~~

 

Yasuda looked at his friend as he set his bag on the bed. The disease was taking its toll - not that Yokoyama had ever been the strapping example of virility and health, at least not in the few years they had known each other. But he hadn't been able to work in some time, growing paler at the lack of sunlight. And it had been a long time since he'd seen anyone else from the construction team.

"They won't even tell me their names," Yokoyama griped, pulling items out of the bag and clearing his throat. There was no dresser or closet and he wasn't entirely sure where he thought these things could go.

"The room's nice, though," Yasuda remarked, rubbing his hand along the door frame. "There's a window."

"So I can look at trees, yay," Yokoyama replied. "How exciting. And a chair. And there's some pipes across the ceiling. Amazing visuals."

"Don't be so grumpy," Yasuda told him. "You'll be out of here soon."

Yokoyama didn't answer. "You promise you're staying?"

"Of course."

A light knock on the door frame caught their attention and Yasuda moved out of the way to let a young nurse in. She had a tray in her hands, which she set down on the chair. "Have a seat please," she said, motioning for Yokoyama to go to the bed. She pulled off the blue cloth that had covered the tray, revealing a syringe and a small bottle.

"What's that for?" Yokoyama asked, visibly uncomfortable.

"Part of the treatment."

"I don't think it's really necessary," Yokoyama started.

He turned to Yasuda for some sort of support - what he had couldn't be cured, only waited out, right? That's what they had all told him. What could a needle possibly do for the incurable?

Yasuda put a gentle hand to his shoulder, smiling at him. "Remember this is for your family, right?"

Yokoyama nodded. "Fine."

The nurse took his arm and rolled it over to flip his palm up. "Clench to make a fist for a moment, please," she asked as she poked around the inside of his elbow. "This will sting a bit."

It stung a lot. The prick of the sharp needle itself wasn't too bad, but whatever she shot into him burned. He could feel it pushing up his veins, setting his arm muscles on fire and then slowly traveling upward. Yokoyama had to grab his arm, pulling it away from the nurse before she could take the needle out. She tsked him, taking his wrist in her hand and holding it down until she could regain the syringe. "It'll help you sleep tonight."

Yokoyama could swear he felt it traveling up his neck, pushing small pockets through his blood - the taste somehow flooding into this mouth.

"Yasuda-san," the nurse said, picking up the tray. "I'll show you where you'll stay tonight."

He nodded. "I'll be with you in a minute."

Yokoyama grabbed his neck, his face clenched in pain. "See? Won't even tell me her name."

"They don't like their patients flirting with them."

"I'm not flirting with her," he grumbled between coughs, lying back on the bed. "I just want to know the name of my butcher." He pointed toward the door with his right hand, swinging it back in a somewhat uncoordinated manner and hitting it against the corner of the chair. "Ow." He looked at his hand. "Great, now I'm bleeding. Who keeps dangerous chairs in patient rooms?"

Yasuda picked it up and surveyed the room. It would have fit perfectly in the corner, far away from the bed. But he opted instead to push it up against the wall, next to the closed sliding door. "It'll be okay," he said.

"I don't feel good," Yokoyama remarked.

"She did say it'll help you sleep. The train ride was long, after all."

"Hm."

Yasuda gave another reassuring smile. "Just relax. Don't worry about it, Yokocho."

 

~~~~~~~

 

In a knee-jerk reaction, a little anger mixed with fear, Yoko threw the journal against the wall. "See?! They totally had Yasu write this!"

Sho gave him a look and walked over to pick it up, just in time for the audio man to come bounding back into the recovery room. "I'm sorry for the delay, the pin mics are ready for you."

"Let's continue with the surgical ward," the AD called, following Inagawa and the cameraman back inside.

Sho nodded and left the journal where it lay, taking the pin mic and quickly attaching it to his shirt. "What were we last talking about? How old the equipment is?"

Yoko lingered, letting the others pass him by as a chime rang out from his pocket. Yasu had already answered his text.

_Hi Yokocho~ Write what journal? Are you filming for Hirunandesu today? Take care, the weather's getting colder._

"He added a penguin emoji," Yoko half grumbled to himself, turning the phone off to dismiss the critically low battery warning. "How am I supposed to stay mad at that?" The audio man stood, waiting, a pin mic in his outstretched hand. "Thanks," Yoko said with a small nod, taking it from him and pulling up his shirt to thread the wire up to his collar. He tapped the head quickly for a test, getting a thumbs up from the audio man in response. "Okay, coming," he said, leaving the room. Clearly they weren't supposed to have found the journal yet, so for all he cared it could just sit there and wait.

Sho was looking around the surgery room - not with detached curiosity like a spectator, but like a man who had lost his keys and knew they'd turn up if only he checked one more spot.

"What are you looking for?"

Sho held up his hand, the one he had nicked on the chair earlier. "It's still bleeding." What Yoko thought was merely a prick turned out to be a sizeable cut, a long enough red line that Sho felt the need to push the thumb of his other hand into his palm right underneath it - maybe to stop it from dripping, maybe to counteract the pain. Maybe just out of habit. "It's a hospital, right?" he said. "Tiny chance there's a bandage around."

"There's one over there," Yoko said, pointing to a rag on the floor in the corner - one that had clearly been used to mop up excess blood on the last patient.

"I meant a clean one!"

"Isn't there a first aid kit in the van?"

"Inagawa-san, if you'll continue where you left off," the AD called from the hallway.

Sho looked around and undid the top two buttons of his shirt, opening it enough to allow him to reach in and wipe his hand across his white undershirt. He made a face at the stain - not of disgust but embarrassment. "I hope they're not filming this," he whispered, glancing over his shoulder at the cameraman behind him. It worked well enough to clean off his hand and Sho quickly rebuttoned. "Let's just finish this part first."

Inagawa shuffled closer to the steel table - the wheel on the front left leg visibly broken, giving it a slight lean. "Surgery sometimes was, and still is, used to treat tuberculosis," he explained. "They may have attempted to remove part of the lung to save the patient, though I don't know how successful they would have been at that time. Or how numb they could make a patient. If you would imagine, being unable to breath, and this pain and heaviness in your chest because your lungs wouldn't expand all the way - and the doctor tells you the only way to make it better - maybe - is to go through your ribs, spread them apart and pull out part of an organ-"

"No," Yoko said, rubbing his left eye with his hand. "Let's not imagine that."

"-and even though a part of you is gone, it doesn't relieve the pressure." Inagawa started to cough, so much that he had to lean over and grab the front of his shirt, clenching it in his fist. "The air here is bad. Not many survived that." He waved his hand in front of him, trying to scatter the dust away. "Something really bad happened here."

Sho uttered a noise of discomfort, wrapping his arms around his shoulders. "They were supposed to be helping, but they did more harm than good. Those people probably would have had a better chance if they had just stayed home."

"It's not that," Inagawa said, moving away from his spot. "Maybe you'd be angry about the procedure, but if you thought it was your last hope...this is something…." He trailed off and looked up at the ceiling - a black ooze had seeped through over the years. It was darkest and most concentrated directly over the table and spread out in blots over the entire room, causing part of the material to sag.

"We should probably get out of here," Sho commented, backing up while staring above. "That mold's probably what's making you cough?"

Yoko looked at him to make some sort of comment about the stains - and instead reached out and grabbed his shirt, pulling him over. "Look what you're about to back into," he said. He pointed to the jagged edges of the blown out bulb in the surgical light. It wouldn't have done too much damage, but Sho was already striking out when it came to safety - a disastrous trip over the wire or even turning around and accidentally getting a shard of glass rammed in an eye wasn't impossible at this point. Yoko frowned. Sho wasn't exactly the picture of grace, but he'd never been _this_ clumsy. He was usually capable of getting out of a location shoot without accidentally impaling himself. Yoko felt the urge to chastise him, but it quickly died in his chest - wrong place, wrong time.

Inagawa didn't look well. His eyes had watered up and he was clearing his throat into his sleeve, trying not to gag. "This place is much worse than we thought."

A loud snap came from the hallway and the quelled urge to lecture suddenly sparked back up; Yoko turned to yell at the cameraman. "Could everyone be a little more careful? I can't watch where you're all going!"

The cameraman gave him a curious glance and then quickly made a face. "You've got to be kidding me."

"What's wrong?" the AD asked, coming up behind him.

"The camera," he muttered, pulling it off of his shoulder and balancing it against his knee. "Hear that whirring noise? That's not supposed to happen."

"Another delay?" the AD squeaked. She bowed to everyone. "I'm sorry, it'll be another fifteen minutes."

"NTV usually doesn't have this many technical difficulties," Sho commented.

"It's probably part of the plan to scare us," Yoko complained in return.

"Lucky for me then." Sho held up his hand, the redness peeking through the line on his palm again. "I'm going to find the first aid while we wait."

Once again, they filed out of the abandoned hospital, back into the woods. Yoko followed behind, purposely last, looking around as he went - in the corners, ceilings, stopping to peer closely at any seemingly too convenient panes of dark glass. Anywhere he knew would be the perfect spot for a hidden camera.

He finally shuffled into the recovery room, aimlessly moving through it, poking at things with his shoe, bending over to get a better look. He scuffled back and forth, half listening to the staff discuss audio difficulties and the AD apologizing to Sho for his scrape. Yoko pulled his phone out of his pocket - then put it right back. To the door frame, the bed, in front of the chair, back. He pulled his phone out again. It had to be instantly turned off the minute it finally warmed up. To the door frame again, peeking his head through to peer down the hallway and immediately deciding that had been a bad idea.

For some reason, Yoko didn't feel compelled to step outside and join the others by the vans. After all, it was a pain having to walk over all that debris. The fewer times he did so, the less likely he was to find something unpleasant left in the rubble.

But he was so bored he couldn't even get properly annoyed at the situation.

Yoko sighed and crouched down to pick the journal off of the floor where he had thrown it earlier. "Why not."

 

~~~~~~~

 

Yokoyama was covered in sweat, barely able to turn his head when Yasuda entered the room. "How are you feeling?" Yasuda asked him.

"Terrible," came the answer.

Yasuda pulled the chair next to the bed and sat as close as he could to his friend. "Your cough sounds better at least."

"That's because I can't breathe enough to cough anymore," Yokoyama muttered. "They're still letting you stay here?"

"I think the nurses like me," he answered. "And I told them I was starting to cough too." Yasuda demonstrated: a dry, unconvincing _heh-heh_ , almost like a weak laugh. He smiled as Yokoyama rolled his eyes. "They even gave me some charcoal, I think they saw me drawing in my journal yesterday and thought I could use it."

"Why are you still here?" the other muttered, trying to roll onto his side to turn away.

"I told you I wouldn't leave."

"You should. It's boring here, you're probably really bored. There's nothing to do but sit around and wait and look at white walls and trees through windows."

"That's not true," Yasuda answered. "The nurses told me this used to be a monastery decades ago, before it was converted into a hospital. I think part of it burned down, but there's a bunch of the monks' writings left that they keep."

"Yasuda. That's boring."

"No, trust me, it's really interesting. Maybe I can bring a couple in here and read them to you while you're resting," he insisted. "There's one I was reading today, I think it was a poem or maybe it was a song, the structure had an inherent melody to it - I kept singing when I read it. It was about these men from a village-"

"Yasuda," Yokoyama interrupted, rolling onto his back. "I think I'm getting worse."

"You just haven't been here long enough. Did you get any sleep at least?"

Yokoyama shook his head no. "I can't sleep. These stupid injections are the worst. They don't make me sleepy at all. They're not helping."

"That's not true, I told you - your cough sounds better."

"I can't move at night," Yokoyama said, shifting his glance to the side to avoid eye contact. "I'm tired, but that junk keeps me awake and I'm so exhausted I can't even lift my arm."

"Ah," Yasuda replied, nodding, full of attention and sympathy. "So you can't get up if you need to p-"

"Let's not talk about it," Yokoyama grumbled. "It's so loud at night and they won't let me close the window. You should leave me here." A knock came at the door frame and at the sight of the nurse walking in with her tray, he pulled back against the wall next to his bed as best he could. "Just not right now," he quickly added.

"Time for treatment," the nurse commented.

"No, not time for treatment," Yokoyama replied. "It's not doing any good, so let's just stop."

"You're not giving it a chance," the nurse said, pulling his arm away from his side.

"Just let her do it," Yasuda said, nodding. "You'll feel so much better in a couple of weeks when you're past this, right? Go through this and I'll call the whole team and we'll have a big party when you're better."

Yokoyama nodded. He missed his family, but he missed the construction crew just as much. They'd all been in the same company for years now, well over a decade. He knew some of the other employees better than he knew some of his family members. It seemed like it had been forever, even with Yasuda giving him updates about the other guys. A lot of them had left. Moved, found wives. He was the only one who had left to be sick. Together they'd been rebuilding the country, making it better. But none of them had wanted to see Yokoyama get worse. None of them had wanted to come see him at all - save Yasuda.

"Oh," the nurse commented, "...oh my god, look at this cut, this is-"

"It's nothing."

"No, it's bad. It's really bad."

Yokoyama lifted his hand to look. It didn't feel like much of a scrape, he was pretty sure he had had much worse in his life. He blinked away the fogginess of his exhaustion and wondered if she was freaking out about the dirt around his palm. He couldn't help it, the bedframe was filthy and it was all he had to grab onto to pull himself up.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm afraid gangrene has set in."

"What?" he asked, with a half-sneer of disbelief. "No it hasn't, it's only a cut, I just did it the other day."

"I'm going to get the doctor," she said, getting up quickly.

"It was like this yesterday, why didn't you say anything then?" he called after her. "My hand's fine, it's just a little cut!"

"Yokocho," Yasuda said. He was looking straight at the palm, his mouth open. His face contorted, a pained expression as he blinked back tears and said, "I'm sorry."

"Why?" Yokoyama asked, holding his hand up again. "There's nothing wrong with it. See? It's fine. There's nothing wrong, it doesn't have gangrene, it's not even infected. It looks fine. Right?"

Yasuda wiped his face.

"Right? Right, Yasuda, there's nothing wrong with it!" Yokoyama looked again, unable to see anything more than a little rust and dirt - not even blood coming out of the opening. He tried to sit up, but felt dizzy and disoriented - the problem with not sleeping. Or eating. Yokoyama's stomach gurgled at the thought and he couldn't recall the last time he'd had food. The days had been a blur of burning pain and clammy immobility. Yokoyama made a fist with his right hand, squeezing it as tight as he could and feeling no pain. It didn't hurt, that was a good sign - wasn't it?

"Just do what they ask, Yokocho," Yasuda said.

Wasn't it? Yokoyama started to panic. "How bad is it?"

The nurse burst back into the room, another in tow and a doctor with them. She had some kind of leather straps in her hand, designed to tie his limbs down to the bed. "You'll have to leave," she told Yasuda.

"Why, what are you going to do?" Yokoyama asked, trying to sit up.

"You're not well enough to fight off this kind of infection," the doctor said. "We'll have to amputate it."

"No, it doesn't need anything like that, it- Yasuda! Yasuda!" Yokoyama called, trying his best to swat away their restraints and reach out to his friend, who was backing out of the room slowly through the open door. "Aren't you going to try antibiotics first? Something, nobody does this anymore- Yasuda! Don't let them, Yasuda, it's not that bad! Yasuda!"

"Let them help you, Yokocho."

"Yasuda!"

The doctor grabbed Yokoyama's arm and forced it to the bed, putting his knee on the shoulder and bicep to hold it in place while one of the nurses shoved the needle into his vein as fast she could. "Hand me the bonesaw, we'll do it before he even knows what hit him."

"Yasuda!!"

 

~~~~~~~

 

"Yokoyama?"

Yoko jumped at the touch on his shoulder. Sho had a giant smile on his face and a piece of cloth tied around his right hand. "All fixed," he beamed. "Oh, you picked the journal back up."

"No I didn't," Yoko said automatically, defensively.

"It's right there," Sho said, pointing at his hands, laughing. "What was the next entry like? Did they take him into surgery, was he...one of the ones in that room?"

Yoko didn't want to answer. So instead he started reading out the next passage: "Today was a hard day, but sometimes horrible things have to happen. Horrible things help."

Sho looked apologetic, rubbing his own chest and cringing at the thought. "Oh."

"No, it wasn't th-" Yoko was interrupted by the sound of one of the vans starting and the crew shouting out their farewells. "What the?"

"Inagawa-san had to leave," Sho explained. "He has another obligation, the malfunctions sort of set him off schedule. Oh, I should have exchanged numbers so I can thank him later! Inagawa-san! Inagawa-san!" He scrambled over the clutter out of the hospital to catch the van before it left.

The dash kicked up aged dust that quickly settled on Yoko's face, causing him to cough. He covered his mouth halfway through, choking the rest down - him, coughing, in that room. At that bed. He rubbed his face, half embarrassed at the idea that he was startled - and half trying to wipe away the idea that this "Yoko" he was reading about, this Yokoyama, was real. Was him.

He opened up the journal again, hoping the next entry would detail their peaceful train ride home, where Yokoyama would be reunited with his friends and family, maybe just one appendage lighter.

"Yokoyama?"

 

~~~~~~~

 

"Yokoyama?"

The voice floated into his ear and groggily he stirred. Whatever had hit him had hit him hard. His muscles ached and his limbs were slow to react. He knew Yasuda was speaking, but the words were crushed and filtered - he was speaking above the waves and Yokoyama was drowning in his own sweat.

"What?" he finally said.

"You're awake," Yasuda replied, sounding relieved.

"Debatable," Yokoyama grumbled. He tried to sit up but the stiffness in his body wasn't having it - nor was the pressure in his chest, the next cough building up in his lungs. The room was blurry, though he supposed there wasn't much to see. How clear did piping along a white ceiling need to be? "I wanna leave," he muttered.

"I know," Yasuda replied. "But you're not well yet."

"Big deal."

"Where are you going to go, Yokoyama? Go home? Get your family sick? Live on the streets, make them worry?"

"Okay, okay," he replied.

"I mean, what can you do now?"

"Hm?" Yokoyama turned his head, bringing the fuzzy image of Yasuda into sight - at least what he could see of Yasuda. His lids were so heavy, it seemed, still full of sleep. He lifted his right arm to rub his fingers over his eye, his hand never connecting. At first he assumed it was the medication - another injection, another eight hours of unresponsive limbs. And then he knew that he'd never feel his right hand on his face again. "They did it."

"Yokocho, I'm sorry."

Yokoyama thudded his head back against the pillow, squeezing his eyes shut tightly. What was one hand? Just one hand. He suppressed the coughing and the urge to cry until it was all too much and he found himself saying, "Ow," as his left hand instinctually lifted to his left cheek. It was a pain that intensified and Yokoyama forced himself to stop cringing, opening his eyes to look up again at Yasuda. The world wasn't blurry from a post anesthetic haze - he couldn't focus on his friend's face with half of his vision blacked out. His fingers didn't touch the soft skin of his cheek, but the starchy fabric of some sort of wrap. Bandage. Patch.

"Yasuda, why does my eye hurt?"

Yasuda paused before responding. "They were trying to knock you out, for the pain."

"What do you mean trying? I just woke up, they obviously gave me something!"

"You were thrashing around," Yasuda continued, apologetic tone. "They only had the one arm restrained."

"So?!"

"So...they were trying to anesthetize you and you knocked into the nurse, remember? You...you accidentally jammed the needle into your eye when you knocked her arm, Yokocho."

"Oh," he replied, in a higher pitched voice, betraying his false bravado. "It'll just heal up and I'll be fine. Needle to the eye, I'm the toughest guy in the whole hospital. No big deal!"

"Yokoyama, they had to take it out. Completely. There was nothing they could do, they had to remove your eye."

Yokoyama didn't say anything and he didn't respond to Yasuda's unwarranted apology. He took a deep breath, as deep as he could - an idea that backfired on him as it set off a fit of coughing. Each time his body shook, he could feel every severed fiber in his wrist, his eye socket, until finally he came to a rest - staring straight up at that white ceiling, seeing nothing, while the wheeze in his breath punctuated the silence in the room.

After a moment, he said, "Yasuda?"

"Yeah?"

"Close the window. I'm tired of hearing the wind at night."

"Okay," he replied, leaving Yokoyama's side to pull the lone small window down. He flipped the latch at the top, locking it. He stood by it for some time, waiting for Yokoyama to say something. He supposed he should have said something himself first, announcing the task done or asking what else he could do. But instead Yasuda stood by the window, watching his friend stare up into nothingness, the emotion and fight drained out of his face. Yokoyama's first deep sleep at the hospital had cost him a hand and an eye.

"Yasuda?" he finally said, not looking away from the ceiling.

"Yeah?"

"I'm glad you're here."

 

~~~~~~~

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

"I'm sorry that took so long," the AD apologized. "We have hand held cameras as a back up, so we can continue and finish the shoot."

"Where's our camera guy?" Sho asked.

"He went back with Inagawa-san and the driver," she explained, turning on one of the handhelds. "He's afraid that the camera we were using is broken for good." She looked at them with a pleading face. "The driver will be back to pick you up in an hour, and we can finish the last room by then and complete today's shoot."

"This is one of her first solo assignments, I heard," Sho whispered to Yoko, a pre-emptive strike to any sourness at the news.

Instead, Yoko shoved the journal into Sho's stomach as he walked by. "Take this away from me."

"Are you okay?" Sho asked, following behind. "You look kind of shaken."

"It's a stupid trick," Yoko said, trying to muster up his best indignation. "The rest of the entries are beauty tips for make-up, it's all a joke."

"Really?" Sho asked, opening it up to skim a later entry.

Yoko grabbed the journal before he could read anything and tucked it into the back of his pants. "Let's hurry up so we can go home."

The two followed the AD back into the hallway, this time turning left instead of right, with the audio man leading her so she didn't stumble while filming. "The last room we want to look at is the large bath they had installed for patients."

The floor started to slope beneath them and the rotted wood gave way to cracked tile. There were a few stairs in the middle of the room, leading down to a shallow second level that was littered with drains so dark, Yoko couldn't be sure whether they were caked with rust or residual blood. "Ah, this room was the communal bath," the AD said, trying her best to fill Inagawa's shoes. "Patients were brought here to soak in hopes it would soothe them."

Yoko turned to his side to look at Sho. The younger man had his arms crossed as he surveyed the room, turning his head this way and that; at some point he spotted an old bathing station, railings over a portable plastic tub, tucked back into a corner, barely emerging from the dark like a predator. It caused him to jump, which in turn caused him to quickly look around in hopes that no one saw his embarrassing reaction. Yoko turned away before he was caught, pretending to be interested in the AD's uninformative speech, still watching Sho out of the corner of his eye. Something seemed wrong.

Something...off. Like the way Sho stood, or the way he had all his weight on his right leg. Or something he was wearing.

Or the way he had chosen to stand directly in front of a wall with a long crack in it, one that slowly sloped and jagged across the entire side of the building - running behind Sho right where his head was attached to his neck. If it had been lightning, or a wire - or anything more tangible than a crack - it would have cut right through, decapitating him. The crack would have shot right through and Sho's head would have tipped forward and rolled off, coming to rest around the drain in the floor.

Yoko rubbed his face vigorously to shake the idea. 

"There are puddles in here," the audio man commented. "With mold in them."

"I think it rained in this area yesterday?" the AD offered.

"That mold's moving," Sho pointed out, uncrossing his arms and hopping down the steps to take a look. "Those are tadpoles."

"Tadpoles?" Yoko crouched next to him to look at the pool of squirming black clots. He'd never actually seen tadpoles in real life, just pictures in science textbooks from a long time ago. Usually the biology diagrams went from vaguely sperm-like beings to full grown frogs in one step, so Yoko was surprised to see that these were like neither. Giant mouths with hindlegs and tails, the size of each the same as his pinky. He poked his finger into the water and the small animals scattered.

Sho made a face.

"Scared of frogs?" Yoko asked.

"No," he replied. "Less scared and more disgusted." He shrugged and stuck his finger in, next to Yoko's. The tadpoles suddenly changed direction and started to swarm, speeding toward the tip with mouths gaping. "Gross," he said, quickly pulling it out and shaking the water off before they could connect. 

The AD looked devastated. "I don't know if we can use any of this footage. A moldy ceiling and, and...tadpoles? What am I going to do? What am I…?"

The audio man pulled off his headphones. "Hey, are you okay? You don't look so good."

"I'm fine," she said, waving him off. "It's just this is the centerpiece of the special and they said if I did well I could...oogh."

The audio man sprang and grabbed her arms, pulling the camera out of her hand and setting it down to brace her. "Hey, I think you need to sit down for a second. Hello?" He snapped his fingers in front of her face. "Maybe we should get you to a hospital."

"The other van's still here," Sho pointed out.

The audio man fished into the AD's pants pocket and pulled out the keys. "It'd take too long for someone to get out to us - will you two be okay here?" He put her arm around his shoulders. 

"The driver's supposed to be back in less than thirty minutes," Sho replied. "Go ahead, we'll wait."

He waved at them and led the AD out, who gave a weak, "Sakurai-kun's so cool," as she stumbled away. "I'll take her back to the studio after she sees a doctor," the audio man promised.

Yoko cocked his head to the side. Normally he'd have said something - about how it was ridiculous to leave them alone in an abandoned facility, how they could just join the ride, how this was all too much - even a good snarky jab about how of course the AD would praise _Sho_! But instead he just shook his head, tapping his fingers on top of each other, then on the side of his chin. He tried to open his mouth to protest, but with only Sho around, there didn't seem to be any point. His usual defenses and walls were suddenly lacking, and Yoko wasn't sure what to do about it - what to do with himself. 

Sho mistook it for nervous energy. "Let's go back to the recovery room?" he suggested. "It's creepy in here." They started to leave when he doubled back, grabbing the handheld camera, switching it off.

Once in the other room, Yoko leaned up against the door frame, suddenly reminded of the journal stuck in the back of his pants, poking into his spine. He pulled it out and flipped through the pages. As he did, Sho began to look around the sealed sliding door from before.

"Maybe this room is a bathroom," Sho said, jostling it.

"We just left a giant one."

"I know but," Sho said, somewhat embarrassed. "It's stuck."

A breeze came through, scattering the leaves and paint chips around their feet, scraping against the concrete floor. Yoko thought he heard the building groan and shift and he was quickly reminded that the hospital was condemned for a reason. He moved to the other side, where the wall had spilled out into the forest, and continued to look for where he had left off in the journal.

"I can't believe they had that old picture," Sho mused, bracing himself. He put all of his weight on his foreleg and pulled back on the handle. "Nngh, it's- it's interesting to think about, who survived. Why that particular group made it through all the others, through the auditions, through juniors, still around in the business."

Yoko started to pull at his lip, starting on the next entry.

"There's a good reason it was us, though-"

~~~~~~~

Yasuda stepped into the room, pulling the door to behind him. Fall had just started and the sudden appearance of night earlier and earlier had caught him off guard. The sun would go down soon and he'd need to be in his own quarters.

Yokoyama lay on the bed, staring up, not acknowledging him.

"I'm sorry I didn't come earlier," Yasuda said. He had a sponge and a basin with him and set them down on the chair, pulling it over to the bed. After wiping his hands on his pants - some residual charcoal dust to brush away first - he took the corner of the blanket and peeled it off of his friend, uttering a disapproving noise when he saw. "Your leg's worse," he said. 

The other man didn't answer.

Yasuda placed the sponge in the warm water and lightly dabbed at Yokoyama's left shin. Layers had been skimmed off, exposing dark lines of muscle. They were intermixed with the traces of a yellow bubbly texture that the nurses told him was a good sign. But every day the burgeoning new skin seemed to shrink and slivers of new pieces went missing; the good sign was like an hour of sun in the middle of a week of flooding and rain. "They might have to start putting the restraints on you during the day," he commented, very gently wiping the edges. "If this doesn't heal they're going to have to take it too - you know that. You know that, right?"

"Yasuda?"

"Hmm?" He put the sponge back in the basin. "What is it?"

Yokoyama blinked in thought. "Stay in my room tonight."

"I can't, I'm not allowed."

"You have to," Yokoyama said with desperation, in between coughs. "There's something in here."

Yasuda looked at the window. "They propped it open again, I told them the wind blowing through was too noisy for you."

"It's not the wind," Yokoyama said. He lifted his right hand, motioned to the far corner with his bandaged wrist, stump pointing. "It was never the wind. It's that. It just...sits there. Every night. When you leave, it comes in."

"What comes in, Yokocho?"

"I don't know," he said, unable to lift his head. "They inject me and I can't move to look at it. But I can hear it. It sits there and breaths. And it smells. _I can hear it_ , Yasuda."

Yasuda took Yokoyama's elbow in his hands, wrapping his fingers gently around the bare skin. "There's nothing there."

"It's all teeth and it just sits there and breathes and drools." Yokoyama's eye started to water and he sniffled, unable to lift his arm high enough to wipe his nose. "I don't know why it hasn't gotten me yet, it just keeps waiting. It's so loud," he yelled.

"Shh, shh, Yokoyama," Yasuda said stroking his arm. 

"And the eyes stare at me all night long. The eyes in the walls."

Yasuda stroked his hair. "The nurse is coming soon with your medication."

"No, Yasuda," he cried, "you know that just makes it worse."

~~~~~~~

"Got it!"

Yoko's concentration was broken by the loud crashing of Sho finally getting the door free and slamming it to the side. He had put so much effort into it that he was panting, hands on his knees. "Well?" he asked. Yoko looked back at the journal.

"Oh come on," Sho said, in between breaths. "Where's the handheld camera? I'll get some extra footage of whatever's in here while we wait." He fired up the machine and then carefully lifted his leg high to step over the piled up debris that had blocked the door. "Yokoyama! Hey, Yokoyama! There's an office in here! It's too dark in here, gimme your cell phone."

"No."

"Why not?"

"The battery's almost dead, use yours."

Sho poked his head outside of the office. "I don't have it with me."

"Why not?" 

"I never bring my phone to a location shoot. It'd be disruptive," he answered. "I think I can see some things lying on the desk. It's really dusty in here."

Yoko left him to his devices, opting to lean up against the wall as he tried to recall where he had left off, finger tracing down the page through words until the right one popped out at him. 

"This is Sakurai Sho. I'm in what looks like an administrator's office at this now abandoned hospital."

Yoko switched positions, shooting a look at the dark hole that was the office door. It was a lot harder to find a particular piece of text when standing next to a running commentary.

"It's curious that the administrator's office would be adjacent to a patient recovery room," Sho continued, panning across the walls even though the camcorder captured less than what he could see in real life. "Either the administrator had no fear of catching the disease too, or the proximity was necessary for officials to observe patients - maybe peeking in at night through the sliding door?"

A groaning of wood caught Yoko's ear. "It doesn't sound like the floor's stable," he called, flipping the page - maybe he was actually further into the journal than he realized? "You probably shouldn't be walking around in there."

"I'm not," Sho called. "I'm still standing at the entrance."

The groaning was joined by a cracking, and then the distinct punctuated sound of rock travelling down rock - the smallest bit of gravel coming loose and bouncing its way down to the ground. "Sho," Yoko said, "that sounds like the roof giving way."

"It's fine," Sho said, emerging from the office.

"Yeah? What's that then?" Yoko replied, pulling something off of his shoulder. His left side and part of his back were covered in white dust, a few paint chips and a bit of plaster.

"That's…," Sho started, dusting off his shirt in response and then looking up. "Part of the ceiling." At the next crack, his face became very serious, eyes wide. "Maybe we should wait outside." He pushed Yoko, ushering him out of the hospital completely as quickly as he could. When they reached the entrance, he exhaled loudly and shook out his limbs. "Okay, I think I've had enough today." 

Yoko glanced at his watch. The driver would be back any minute - the sound of tires rolling over loose rock a little too fast would carry through and they'd be on their way back to studios and intact buildings and beds - not recovery cots, not fractured facilities, and certainly not questionable hospitals isolated from the rest of the world. Isolated for good reason at that.

Still. He looked down at the journal in his hands, unsure what to do about it. Somehow, he felt like it couldn't leave, that it needed to stay and be forgotten and overtaken by the forest like the rest of the hospital, no matter who had actually written it. If it left, if it entered the van and made it back to his apartment or to the city, somehow that would legitimize everything he had read; it would make it too real. Even if it was a different Yokoyama, a different Yasuda - an elaborate prank by some creative staff members - the minute it left the area, it gained an existence. Like pulling something out of a dream.

Sho had found a fallen tree near the entrance and sat down, turning on the handheld again - though Yoko wasn't sure why. Maybe because he truly felt bad for the young AD and wanted to get extra footage, any footage, to help; maybe because the whirring of the machine, even though it was hard to hear - especially with all the other noises of the environment around them - was like having a third person there. A third breathing, living being. Sho panned around him and then set it down on the log, pointing it up so it'd capture most of his face.

And Yoko's, who opted to sit next to him. The driver would be back soon and if he wanted to know how things finished, now was the only time.

"You've been really interested in that," Sho said, pointing to the journal. "I thought you said it was just make-up tips?"

"What's that?" he countered. "What'd you take out of the office?"

"This?" Sho held up a folder, then quickly thought to show the camera the front of it before opening. "Not sure, I grabbed it off of the desk before I ran out. Just looks like various paperwork. A couple of old invoices. Notes. Looks like some records from patient files too." He held up the first piece of paper and read off the title - an invoice for bulk cotton balls - still regarding the handheld like a small child he was tasked with educating.

Yoko turned slightly away and opened up the next page.

"That's weird."

Yoko didn't acknowledge him, already discovering Yasuda's description of the communal bath - the same tiles, the same sloped floor, the same curious dark color around the drain.

"There's a tally in here, what they treated and how many cases," Sho continued. "There were less than 20 patients here and none of them are listed as having tuberculosis."

~~~~~~~

Yasuda looked at the wall - a small crack was starting to form in the plaster. Maybe the ground underneath that part of the hospital was too soft, causing it to sink and shift. It was small, though - caught his eye, but nothing worth worrying about.

And nothing worth his distraction. He turned back to the task at hand and grabbed onto Yokoyama's arms. "Ready?" he said.

"Yeah." 

Yasuda liked getting Yokoyama out and away from his room - lately it seemed like anytime he visited, Yokoyama was merely lying in bed, unfocused, unresponsive, rambling when he spoke. But outside the recovery room, he actually smiled a little bit - especially when he felt the sun on his face or the wetness of water against his skin. He'd talk a little bit more. Yasuda wasn't sure why - maybe just out of gratitude to do something different.

Though, he suspected, that wasn't really it. Yasuda pulled Yokoyama out of the chair and steadied him before shuffling to the left side, putting his arm around Yokoyama's back. "And step," Yasuda said.

Yokoyama leaned his weight onto his friend, enough to swing his right leg forward and take a step. It was awkward and clumsy, but Yasuda was careful to make sure that the journey was only ever a few steps. It was just too hard to be his crutch for any longer.

"First step down," Yasuda told him.

Yokoyama nodded. The steps were the worst. "Just put me down," he said.

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

Yasuda gently lowered him so that he could sit on the edge. When Yokoyama extended his leg, he could feel the warm bath with his toes. He took his left hand - his only hand - and pushed against the tiled ledge, scooting his butt down and closer to the water. In a way, it had been very lucky that his left leg had been the problematic one. The stump above his knee reflected the one above his right wrist - it kind of balanced him out.

He had to stop on the third step to cough - wet and sharp, shaking his whole body. He wheezed for air.

"One more," Yasuda reminded him.

Yokoyama nodded. "Yeah, yeah."

Yasuda smiled. It was almost like having the old Yokoyama back again, a little bit. He hopped down the steps and joined his friend in the large bath, soaking in the warm water and scooting by him, letting him lean against his side. It was never just one bout of coughing - Yokoyama began to shake again, first from the disease, then from the cure: when he got enough air back in his lungs, he started to shiver, small tremors in his limbs. Sweat beaded on his forehead. 

"The water's too hot," he complained. Even still, they were only allowed to stay in the bath for a half hour. When it came time, Yokoyama did everything he could to make it difficult for Yasuda to pick him up out of the pool.

Within the hour he was back in his bed, the restraints on the limbs he had left - his nightly injection already taking hold. "Yasuda?"

"Hmm?"

Yokoyama turned his head to look at him - or at least where he thought Yasuda was standing. He still wasn't used to it yet, locating people by sound. "Are the eyes staring at me?"

Yasuda looked up at the wall next to the bed. Had Yokoyama not pulled out his own right eye, his last one, with his own fingers, he would have been able to look for himself. He wouldn't have had to ask, hoping that for once someone else finally saw the hundred eyes that opened in his walls and stared at him at night, rarely blinking, waiting for him to fall asleep. If only he hadn't dug his fingernails under the bone around his eye, pushing his long fingers in - fighting the urge for self-preservation, the urge to stop the pain and blink away the intrusion. If only he hadn't screamed so loud as he grabbed the ball in his hand and pulled, yanked, jerked, while crying and curling his body up, giving into hesitation and only prolonging his misery. If only he hadn't torn it free, only to smash it against the wall and then pass out from the pain. Yokoyama's thrashing had taken his first eye and his own madness the second. Between whimpers he had said it was the eyes in the wall, he couldn't take it anymore. Yasuda was never sure if he meant he couldn't take being stared at all night or everyone's indifference to what he swore he had to suffer through alone. 

All he knew was that the next morning he had very carefully searched the floor to find where the eyeball had landed. And that the true reason Yokoyama was more cheerful, more alive, almost normal again whenever they went out was due to their touch, their mere contact - the physical and tangible thing that Yokoyama could grab onto and know was real. 

Yasuda reached over and took his left hand so he could hold it in his own, interlocking the fingers. He smiled gently. "There's nothing there, Yokoyama."

Yokoyama nodded slowly, the only amount he could manage with the medication kicking in.

"Sleep tight," Yasuda said, looking up at the wall where a hundred malformed black eyes looked back.

~~~~~~~

"You jerk."

Yoko quickly covered his mouth, feeling his stomach churn. With Sho pushing him in the arm, he had to turn away to keep from accidentally punching himself in the nose.

"You're trying to hide your laugh! You had me so scared!"

"What?" Yoko coughed out.

"Augh, I should have guessed it," Sho said, shaking out his hair with his fingers in a bout of frustration. "The vans are gone, the crew all conveniently left, the driver's late while we're stuck at a 'haunted' hospital. You set me up!"

"What are you talking about?"

Sho's nostrils flared, an exaggerated signal of annoyance. He picked up the last item in the open folder on his lap and shoved it toward Yoko. "The staff probably doctored pictures of everyone as patients, huh? When'd you have this taken?"

Yoko took the picture from him to get a better look. Same nose, same lips - it was like looking at a slightly younger version of himself in clothes his grandfather would have worn in his youth, with thick framed glasses, sitting in some room, in a bed, blanket halfway up as he looked at the camera with a shy expression. Not some room, a familiar white room with a bed he knew - one that was only a short distance away, now rotting to dust.

"I should have known," Sho said, his shoulders relaxing. "You even picked this place!"

"What?"

"The production staff in the planning meeting? You're the one that picked our location," he answered. "You even got Aiba to pose in the bath?!"

Yoko vaguely recalled the meeting they'd had at NTV, the debriefing about the purpose of the special and what their itinerary would be like and which shows to send which idol on for promotion. He remembered sitting there nodding and agreeing to a lot and he remembered checking his phone in frustration, no attention span for anything, when the producers had said something. Asked him something. They had three photographs before him and without even really looking he had reached out and, with a heavy thud of his finger landing on the table, pointed to his right. The hospital. 

At the time, he didn't have any particular reason - nothing stood out to him. What had the other two choices even been? An abandoned amusement park in Nara and an entire island in Nagasaki. And he, completely uninterested, picked a hospital - an abandoned hospital regular people couldn't even get to. For no other reason but his finger felt compelled toward that photograph. He hadn't been able to give it a second thought at the time. 

And yet, all day he had managed to focus on entries in a book, speeding his way through the journal.

Sho motioned toward it with a nod. "No wonder you were so convinced Yasu wrote that. I can't believe I fell for all this." He sighed heavily. "I was so scared." He picked up the camera and in his best serious tone repeated, point blank into it, "I was so scared," before turning it off. 

"This isn't a prank," Yoko answered him. "I swear."

"Fool me once, Yokoyama…." 

"Sho, I'm serious, none of this was planned."

They sat there in silence for a moment, with Sho looking at him and scrutinizing his face for signs of a lie. Finally he shook his head, "Fool me once. I really don't look forward to Nino hearing about this." He looked at his watch. "So the driver's really late on purpose?"

"I don't think he's coming," Yoko said.

"Stop that," Sho said, laughing nervously. "Have a little mercy, okay?"

Yoko reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. It wouldn't turn on. He really had taken the battery down too far. 

"He'll be back any minute." Sho stood up and stretched. "I'm going to walk around, I probably pulled every muscle in my body being so tensed up today," he admitted sheepishly.

Yoko opened his mouth to say something. No. I think you should stay here. I think it's a bad idea to wander around here. There's something wrong with this place. Don't wander off. Don't leave.

But he couldn't say anything and instead stood up quickly, grabbing Sho by the arm. 

Sho laughed, peeling his hand off. "I'm just going to look around. Just yell for me if the van pulls up before I get back. This...the staff did a really good job - this hospital's scary."

As he left and turned around the corner, looking at the external walls of the building as he went, cautiously stepping over roots spilled out and in the way, Yoko found that he still couldn't say what he wanted. And he didn't know why. It wasn't the building that was the scary part.

He sat back down on the log and picked up the folder, opening it to sort through the photos. A few familiar faces, members of his group, members of the agency, friends he had grown up with - some in casual clothing, a few in what looked like construction clothes - all at the hospital, some waving, some smiling. All intact. The photograph of Yokoyama must have been taken earlier on, right when he arrived. Well before he understood the reality of coming there. 

None of the pictures were of Yasuda.

~~~~~~~

Yasuda pulled up the chair and was careful to check it before sitting down. He sat close to Yokoyama's side, holding a collection of papers in his lap. "Yokocho?" he asked, gently.

The other man didn't stir. He lay almost completely still on the bed, only shallow, raspy breathing. 

"I don't think they're going to medicate you tonight," Yasuda said, sympathy in his voice. "I brought some of the stuff I told you about. The writings they found in the hospital? What the monks wrote?"

There was a sound like a whimper in response.

Yasuda continued. "I think most of the monks must have died in the fire so their writings must be really important to have survived." 

The whimper. And wheezing.

"This one's really interesting, apparently young men from the nearby area used to seek out the temple that stood here." Yasuda stopped to look at his friend and smile warmly - he knew it couldn't be seen, but maybe it could be sensed, anyway. "I'll stay tonight, okay? I won't leave you."

Whimper. 

"I thought I'd read it to you to keep you company, okay?" Yasuda cleared his throat. "When young men came to the temple, the leaders always had to ask about their intentions."

*******

"Something bad's happening in my village," he said, the answer coming so quickly and confidently that it took his companion slightly off guard.

"Bad?" the head priest asked.

"All the men," Shota continued. "All my friends have left. In the last month they've all disappeared one after another and haven't returned. There's something wrong with the village."

The head priest turned his head - to pose the same question as before but this time at Ryo, who responded with an embarrassed nod and half-smile. "Same," he sputtered out, trying to duck the holy man's gaze. He had put one hand on his friend's back to push him forward, closer to the temple entrance blocked by the imposing priest. 

"He's from there too," Shota explained. "We've been friends since we were kids. He wants to help too."

"You've come to offer your prayers?"

Shota shook his head no. "I want to learn how to fix it. I want to stay with you until I know how to save the village."

The priest gave a sideways glance to Ryo before turning and motioning them to follow. "I don't know what we can teach you, but everyone's welcome here."

Shota smiled brightly as he took off his sandals to follow behind. "That's what I've heard." The weather had started to turn cold and the wooden floor of the entrance was icy beneath his bare feet. The head priest moved swiftly, leading them further in. The lanterns flickered as they passed, the flames moving like breath; though it was still daytime, they had been lit to help the monks navigate the dark innards of their home. The wood gave way to straw mats, which, though softer, didn't dampen the creaking and groaning of the floor beneath their weight. The further in, the warmer it was, the softer it was, the darker it was - like being swallowed whole.

Or being protected, Shota thought to himself, as a weak wailing carried through the walls. His uncle was a monk at a grander temple in the city, a more prestigious one. A larger one. Ornate. This temple was modest to say the least: small, not even an outside gate. It had taken them nearly two days of navigating the forests to find it. 

The wailing became louder, the sound broken often by the choking of pain in the man's voice. "What is that?" Ryo asked. As they halted for a moment, he put his hand on Shota's shoulder and pushed his cheek against it, keeping his head tucked in and close to his friend.

Shota remained unwavered. It had been Ryo's idea. He had heard of this temple and suggested it, knowing that the larger ones would have all turned them away, would have offered prayers and sympathy and nothing more. But despite this, Shota noticed that Ryo had been tense ever since they left the village. His friend was curious - braver than most when it came to conventional fears. For example, Ryo would travel through the forest alone, absent for several days at a time and never once scared of what might await him. And at the same time, he was often terrified of the smaller things, letting out unrestrained panicked yelps when something caught him by surprise. 

"One of our guests," the head priest remarked, his face solemn as he listened. "In need of a different kind of help."

"A leper?" Ryo asked.

The head priest nodded and Shota felt a sense of relief to have confirmation that the rumors were true - the monks accepted anyone, even those who were delivered to their hearth to do nothing more than slowly die.

"The disease left him open to much evil. He won't be long," the head priest explained. "You can sleep in here during your stay."

"Were there lepers in this room too?" Ryo grumbled.

"It's safe. We've cared for many here and not a single monk has fallen ill. You won't catch it." The head priest slid open the door and stepped back to let them enter. It was somewhat dark, but Shota walked in without hesitation, taking the pack off of his shoulders and setting it aside. The priest disappeared down the hall and returned with a lantern, holding it up to let them see their strange new sleeping quarters. It seemed much nicer than most of the temple, the walls covered in painted murals - done by the monks themselves, Shota assumed. He couldn't make the forms out clearly, only that it appeared to be several men - a scene of a samurai battle most likely. The floor was softer and, despite a lack of light or fire, surprisingly warmer than the hallway.

"Once you're ready, I have a task for you," the head priest remarked. "In return for staying with us and learning from us."

Shota turned to Ryo who nodded in response - it was only fair.

Within a minute the three were quietly walking through the hallway, back toward the light of outside. They opted to say nothing, giving the dying man in the other room an attentive audience as he continued to utter his final piece through moans and sobs.

"Here." Once they were back at the entrance, two monks brought wooden buckets, with old and crude brushes for each. "Take these and draw a line around the temple before the sun sets. It will protect us from wayward spirits during the night."

Shota sat down to put his sandals back on, nodding as one of the monks set a bucket beside him. He had never heard his uncle mention such a ritual, nor anyone using a circle as some sort of protective seal, but he wasn't about to argue. The monks knew what they were doing. If they wanted him to stand under a waterfall to prove his commitment, he'd be there until they had to drag him out. Everything happened for a reason and such a simple task as painting a line was certainly worth it if he could find a way to protect his village from whatever it was that had lured all of its sons away.

They were instructed to walk until the temple looked no larger than the size of their thumbs, then generously spread the liquid on the ground and around the base of the trees until the circle was complete. Shota peered into his bucket - the liquid seemed thick, a dark color. He bent over to sniff it, causing a taste to fill his mouth - salty and like metal; he jerked away quickly and gave into the overwhelming urge to spit. "What is this?"

Ryo lifted his own bucket higher to smell the contents. "Ah, it's blood," he replied, making a face. "Probably deer."

Shota nodded slowly. "Maybe it keeps bears from coming up to the temple?" He wished he hadn't been so curious - the smell was stuck in his mind, lingering in his nose. He bent down to the ground and put the brush in, slopping out the first splat of red liquid on the ground and streaking it across the leaf litter and dirt. Each stroke only covered a small area, forcing him to scoot backwards slowly, sometimes running into trees, and to dip his brush in frequently, which seemed to stir up the blood. The task quickly became tedious - and nauseating. Instead of crouching, he hung his torso over so he could simultaneously walk and paint. He swore each time he laid a fresh stroke that the smell was worse and worse - from salt and metal to the burning of flesh, the stench that erupted from an animal carcass left too long in the woods. If this was to be a nightly ritual he'd have to get used to it eventually, so he spat on the ground when he needed and kept up the pace.

Ryo had opted to go in the opposite direction to cover more ground. Even though Shota had lost sight of him, he could still hear Ryo's protests of, "This reeks!" and all the cursing that went along. His friend finally came into sight again as the sky started to grey out with the approaching dusk. 

Shota paused and stretched out his back. "Ryo," he complained. The other had abandoned his brush and was pouring the rest of the contents on the ground as he approached.

"It's the same thing," Ryo argued.

"You have to be more careful about these things- ah." Shota was pointing to his part of the line to make a point when he realized that somehow he had gotten some on his sleeve, stained through and dripping off of his skin. He wondered if he had splashed it when he was pulling the blood out with his brush. 

Ryo shook out the last few drops from his bucket. "You got it on you?"

Shota rubbed at his skin with his other sleeve, only smearing it more on his right forearm. "It stinks - maybe there's a pond around?"

"It'll have to wait, it's getting dark," Ryo said.

Shota sighed, nodding. He tipped his bucket over and poured out the last of the blood, finishing the circle. "Maybe the monks have some bathing water ready at the temple that I can use." He pushed his sleeve down over the mess on his skin. "Let's go back."

Ryo stood, looking at him, a certain reservation to him - a complete change in demeanor. Before, even when bothered by the presence of the leper, he had been loud and focused. Now he was glancing at the blood on Shota's sleeve with his head dipped, his eyebrows furrowed.

"If it smells that bad I'll sleep in another room tonight," Shota joked.

Ryo quietly laughed and rubbed his eye with his hand, a gesture he always did when he was uncomfortable. He jogged to catch up with the other and they quickly returned to the temple.

There, the monks were lined on either side of the entrance, their heads bowed. Shota had only seen a few since they had been there - in fact, the temple itself hadn't seemed large enough to house every one that now stood before him. He muted his smile. There was something thick about the air around them.

"Thank you," the head priest said as they handed over the empty buckets. "I have one more task to ask of you tonight."

"Sure," Ryo said. Shota nodded in agreement, but pulled his right arm behind his back to prevent the holy man from seeing the stain in his sleeve. His arm was starting to itch, but the look on the priest's face told him now was not the time.

"Our guest passed while you were out," he replied. "There's a path behind the temple that leads to a rocky outcrop in the forest. Lay his body out there."

"You're not going to burn it?" Shota asked. "Didn't he have-" He stopped short; a man left at a remote temple to perish surrounded by strangers was unlikely to have any family that would want to attend a ritual or receive his ashes. Shota himself was almost compelled to ask for them, agreeing to bury them instead.

"We cannot cremate lepers," the head priest responded.

"Oh." Shota nodded slowly and obediently. This was perhaps the first lesson of many that he would receive as a resident.

"Take the body past the outcrop," the priest finished. "He is still a part of nature, let him provide food for the animals there." Four monks moved to the front, holding the man - his body now wrapped tightly in a sheet. "Quickly, before it gets too dark. We'll light lanterns around the path so that you can find your way back if you get lost."

Shota expected an immediate rejection from Ryo, loudly refusing and demanding that the monks do it themselves. Instead, he quietly nodded and quickly took the man's legs under his right arm - and a lantern in his left hand - waiting for Shota to grab the head. "Let's get this over with," Ryo muttered.

The path shortly entered the forest and Ryo led the way, stomping through as quickly as he could, not stopping to adjust his grip and only hiking the legs up further into his grasp as he went along. Shota stumbled behind, catching what seemed like every rock and branch lost in the twilight and hidden by the shadows cast from the lantern being at their forefront. The sheet was not wrapped tightly enough and with every bump the cover loosened until Shota was sure he was holding onto the man's flesh underneath.

It wasn't long before they hit the rocky outcrop - a tangle of loose stones and moss before the forest converged tightly, seemingly impassable with brush and thorns, putting their journey to a halt. Leaf litter crunched as they approached - unseeable animals scattering for cover. Ryo crouched down to drop his end. "Let's go," he said.

"Hang on," Shota replied, setting down the head. He took a deep breath and squatted, pulling off his sandals to adjust them after so many knocks. Ryo held the lantern up so that he could see the straps. As he did so, Shota was able to look over at the dead man beside him, tan flesh of a bare shoulder peeking out from under the sheet. "Have you ever seen a leper, Ryo?" he suddenly asked.

"No."

Shota looked at the shoulder curiously. It seemed smooth, intact. Nothing like what he had heard. None of the gruesome rumors children and scared villagers passed around. Ryo opened his mouth to protest, but Shota carefully pulled the sheet back anyway, exposing the man's face and upper torso.

Ryo immediately turned away, choking down a gagging noise.

At first it didn't bother Shota. He felt sorry for the man, obligated as his last human contact to see his body off from the physical world properly. But something was wrong. The man's face was almost entirely disfigured, layers of skin peeled away in parts and growths obscuring many of his features. The rot and mutation continued along his unclothed body - lines down the chest and around the arms. Not spread out, like ice on a river - but in strokes. Delicate and beautiful strokes. His body a poem of disease. 

What wasn't destroyed looked smooth, too healthy and young - too full of color - to belong to a man who had suffered for so long. Shota had the urge to brush the man's hair away from his forehead - what had been his forehead. Even with disfigurement, he felt compelled to compassion - there was something about the man's mouth, the one part of his face still completely intact, that made Shota's chest tight with pity. Then it hit him, the slam of nausea against his body as he lifted his arm, the smell from his sleeve washing over him. Shota quickly scrambled away so he wouldn't be sick next to the body.

"Let's go," Ryo repeated, clearly losing patience.

Shota stayed for a moment, his head hung over. The ground was wet underneath his palms and he took deep breaths, trying to force the sensation out of his body. Somehow it wasn't working - somehow the smell was getting worse.

He coughed, trying to clear his chest. 

"You okay?"

Shota shook his head, not that it did him any good that far from Ryo and the lantern. His coughing became worse until he scrambled back from where he was, jumping up and taking the lantern out of Ryo's hand. "It isn't the stain," he choked out. He held the light high, illuminating the darkness before him.

It wasn't his sleeve, nor was it the dead man they had carried. Shota could see the outline of an arm, sticking up in the air, the fingers bent out in different directions and the skin grey and marked with sores. The arm belonged to a body of what looked like yet another man. A man lying with his limbs arranged - the same disease written on his torso and face. A man lying on the body of another - lying on the body of another. Lying next to the body of another.

This time Shota could do nothing to stop himself from getting sick. There must have been 13 or so, he wasn't sure, all dumped in a pile in various states of decay. All of them with the same blotted out faces and bodies streaked with rot. 

Ryo put a hand to his shoulder and pulled him back. "They've seen a lot of lepers."

"I don't think this is leprosy," he replied. 

The dead carcass of a deer. When Ryo and Shota had been much, much younger they had ventured out into the forest alone - brave little hunters, infuriating their mothers in the process. They had stumbled across the carcass of a deer, perhaps slain by old age or illness or the attack of a predator. Half of its body had been stripped, the meat off its ribs hanging loosely as the maggots writhed in pockets of flesh and vultures swooped in to finish. The smell had hung in the air, like tree branches too strong for Shota to push away. 

The smell of death was one that never left his memory. Shota was surprised it had taken as long as it had before he recognized it. 

He took a step closer.

"What are you doing?" Ryo hissed, trying to pull him back. He heard something scamper off, the bounds of an animal distressed by his exclamation.

"This isn't right," Shota explained.

"The priest said they can't cremate lepers, so let nature take care of them."

"But it's not," he pointed out. Despite hearing the scurry of wildlife around them before, there were no traces of scavengers - no chunks ripped by teeth or picked by beaks or even holes where insects had laid their eggs. He had no idea how long the pile had been there, but any carcass would have been welcome food within the first few days. Nature would not touch these men.

"Let's get out of here," he said, quickly backing away and grabbing onto Ryo's shoulder. As the light left the area, the sounds of small movements in the brush returned. 

Shota jogged until he felt at a safe distance, catching his breath, making sure Ryo was within arm's reach beside him. Between heartbeats he felt the twinge of guilt for having left the man there - the one that somehow begged for his sympathy, his kindness. Shota shook his head, ran his fingers through his hair to shove out the memory. "I think," he started, scratching at his arm. "I think we might have known him."

"What?" Ryo choked out. 

"Something felt familiar, maybe he was a neighbor? Or we bought something from him at some point."

"That's ridiculous," Ryo said. "You couldn't even see his face."

"Yeah," Shota replied. "I guess I just felt sorry for him."

When they returned, the monks had prepared everything for them: pallets in their room, simple robes for their bodies, warm baths and hot meals. "Our reward for doing their dirty work," Ryo muttered.

Shota lingered in the bath. The warmth was welcome; he took a deep breath and sunk into the water until it hit his lips, tiny waves covering his mouth with each ripple from the movement of his arms and hands. Even submerged, his forearm itched, the biting irritation slowly starting to burn. He scrubbed at it, both for relief and to get rid of the stain. It was hard to see in the low light the monks had provided, but the blood was still there - resistant to water and cloth. It stood out against the color of his skin like a birthmark, a stamp he would have for the rest of his life. He exhaled through his mouth, sputtering out bubbles in the water. Maybe that was appropriate, he thought. This was rebirth. His time with the monks, whenever it ended, meant the village would be reborn. He would be reborn.

He got up, jumping out of the tub, splashing water over the side onto the floor. He squeezed his hair in his hand, shaking his head out before grabbing the robe neatly folded and waiting for him. The cold came in quickly and he wrapped it around himself, tying the cord before using the sleeves and body of it to dry off the remaining water, and grabbed the lantern from the wall.

When Shota got to his room - their room - Ryo had already taken the liberty of pulling their pallets together, spreading a larger blanket across the crack between the two. He looked slightly embarrassed to be caught, but Shota merely smiled and said, "Thank you," more than happy to have the extra warmth on such a cold night. And the extra companionship given that day.

He kept his right arm tucked into the sleeve of his robe, away from Ryo's sight. "These look like samurai," Shota remarked, looking at the mural on the wall on his way to the pallets.

"The head priest told me this wasn't always a temple," Ryo answered. "I guess it used to be part of some castle that was destroyed?" 

Shota stopped, lifting the light to inspect the paintings more closely. "Ah, this one looks kind of like you."

"It does not," Ryo said, a sour tone to his voice. He sat down on his pallet and pulled the blanket up to his chest. 

"No it does! It has the same kind of eyes and there's a mo-"

"That doesn't look anything like me!"

Shota dropped it. The samurai in the painting was in the process of being beheaded; he didn't like the idea of seeing his face in death either, so he certainly couldn't blame Ryo for being the same. He mentally reminded himself to get a better look in the morning, when one of the monks could give him an explanation of where it came from and what story it depicted.

He crawled into the other pallet, moving close to Ryo and placing the lantern by their heads. A noise of discomfort escaped his mouth as he repositioned his arm. "I think I fell on it funny," he remarked. "It's starting to hurt."

"It's nothing," Ryo said, turning on his side, his back to Shota. Before the other could respond, he pushed himself up to extinguish the lantern, flopping back onto the pallet with a thud. 

Shota nodded in the dark. Ryo was still tense. Maybe in the morning he'd offer to escort him back home. Ryo would never agree to it, of course, but Shota felt bad about the situation - clearly, the temple had gotten under Ryo's skin more than he would ever admit.

In the silence of the night, with his eyes closed, he could hear the wind outside the temple, the faint calls of animals. The slow, sharp noise - like a saw across wood - growing, clawing its way toward them. For a brief moment he found himself truly hoping that their carelessness with the protective circle earlier wouldn't be their undoing. He blocked the sound out, moving closer to Ryo and steadying his own heartbeat as he listened to the rhythm of Ryo's breath. The other was warm, like the water had been. He was glad Ryo was there; he was glad his friend was at his side.

His dreams spun and churned that night, and he awoke to the soft touch of something against his skin - the covers removed and his robe open. Ryo was sitting up, looking down at him. Shota couldn't make out his expression in the dim light; he could only feel Ryo's touch - steady - and hear his breath, calm and even. 

Ryo pulled Shota's robe open even further, peeling the side away from his legs and resting his warm hand against the exposed flesh of Shota's hip. The robe was splayed out, like the wings of a butterfly, and before he could say anything, Ryo leaned over, gently kissing him on the forehead. Shota tilted his head back to push out his chin, catch the adam's apple of Ryo's throat with this bottom lip, pulling it softly over the skin.

"Don't do that," Ryo said, his voice cracking a little.

Shota nodded and let Ryo continue. There came a kiss on each eye, Shota blinking to meet the light pressure on his lids. Ryo lingered - it wasn't like the soft touch of a lover, or even the rushed kiss of nerves, afraid of being caught with his feelings exposed, rejected. His lips were firm, unwavering, holding the contact for far too long. Like a kiss goodbye.

Shota felt something wet drop against his face - something that rolled down the crease by the side of his mouth into the corner, hitting his bottom lip. Salty, like tears. Salty, like blood.

Shota didn't move as he felt the light, wet brushstrokes against his face, pulling over his forehead and eyelids, down his cheeks onto his neck. He was sure that if he really wanted to, he could sit up and push Ryo over, overpower him and run out of the temple. But he didn't - he couldn't convince himself to do so even as he realized the smell from earlier had already filled the room. He had known Ryo all of his life, inherently trusted him. All he could manage was, "What are you doing?"

"Saving the village," he replied.

Shota nodded and took a deep breath, relaxing his muscles to the touch of Ryo's brush. The scroll for Ryo's characters, delicately painted on his body with the rotted blood. Perhaps words of gratitude. Love. Apology. Shota's arm started to burn, his skin boiling, from where he had splashed himself earlier - his own careless mark. It would not be very long before it would sink into his eyes, his chest. And then he too would be disfigured, choking out his last painful words to anyone who would listen.

And then dumped. Into a pile of unnatural death that tainted everything around the temple.

He would have cried at the thought if it hadn't been for Ryo's delicate touch.

When Ryo had finished, he quietly tapped the brush against the edge of his cup, careful not to splatter the rotted blood on his sleeve or on the floor. He leaned over one last time, lightly kissing Shota on the lips - where no blood had passed, pure and left alone. He quietly got up and gathered his materials, leaving Shota alone, marked and exposed. 

In the morning it had already begun to eat through his eyelids, dissolving away the tissue like hot water poured on ice. His breathing was labored. He thought he saw small black creatures creeping up around his body - his limbs now too damaged to move hardly at all - but couldn't tell what was hallucination and what was the result of his eyes melting away. 

With light peaking through, he turned his head to look at the mural on the side - the depiction of the group of samurai falling in battle. He couldn't turn his neck far enough to look at the one that reminded him of Ryo, and instead stared at what was beside him: the samurai having his tongue removed. Shota blinked. He had merely assumed it was a battle, but with his last sight, he realized that no warring faction had ever been so brutal. 

The samurai hadn't lost some war to an enemy, but were being sacrificed. Shota tilted his head the best he could - the one losing his tongue had a mole under his lip, on the right. 

Much like the man they had carried out to the woods the night before.

Much like one of the other men in the village, one that had only gone missing a week prior. One that Shota had worked with before and knew by name. That Ryo had been friends with as a child. Like many of the men had been - friends, coworkers, neighbors. One by one, missing.

Shota's throat burned. 

Outside the room, down the hallway, into the main opening of the temple, Ryo sat with a scroll in front of him, carefully making strokes with his brows knit together.

"You continue to write down your song?" the head priest asked. 

Ryo didn't answer, concentrating on the words in ink as he blocked out the screams that began to ring out through the walls.

*******

Yasuda nodded. "Creepy, isn't it? ...Yokocho? Yokocho?" He stood and looked at the still body on the bed, the wheezing stopped. "You finally passed," he commented, a sigh. He looked down his nose, coldly. "I'm glad you didn't cry like Ikuta did, that was hard to sit through."

Whimper.

And scratching, against the hard floor - and the smacking of lips, the grunts and heavy breath of anticipation wetted with saliva.

Yasuda looked to the corner but his expression remained static - no additional pity for that miserable creature either, he felt. Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled a piece of charcoal out. He stepped outside of the room, reaching behind the door to hold it steady as he drew a large black X across its front. "Last one," he said to himself, dropping the charcoal on the floor.

The whimpering intensified.

He had left the pile of writings on the chair, and at the very bottom was his journal. Yasuda pulled it out, pushing the papers onto the floor, and began writing his last entry. He wasn't sure why he had spent so much time detailing Yokoyama's decline when he hadn't for the others - probably his fondness for the man. Maybe because it had taken so long for him to finally go down - 9 days, much longer than the rest.

The words came to him slowly, his attention constantly distracted by the never-ending whining from the corner. "Fine," Yasuda said. He set down his work and stood next to Yokoyama's body. Gently, he pulled the sheet and blanket off and piled them on the floor at the end of the bed. Like an ancient cultural ritual, where every moment meant something and was performed delicately and with precision, Yasuda neatly folded Yokoyama's pant leg up until his shin was visible. He reached under the bed and pulled out a small knife that had been tucked up into frame.

Like an art. He made a very careful cut, slicing the skin and just the slightest bit of muscle off - a strip as long as his hand. It was still too fresh - he used the pant leg to wipe up the slowly escaping blood. He paused for a moment. No need to clean it and dress it, obviously.

Yasuda tossed the slab into the corner, to eating louder than the whimpering had been. He knew better. It had been waiting long enough - tastes were no longer sufficient. The impending whining would be insufferable.

"Fine," he said, undoing the belt restraints that were on Yokoyama's leg and wrists. He took a moment to remove the bandages over his eyes, both still gaping wounds, and quietly stood beside his friend, his hands on Yokoyama's cold arm.

And after a moment, Yasuda used all his strength to reach under Yokoyama's body to drag him off of the bed and into the floor. Out of the fading light that was already retreating from the room, and into the darkness of the far corner. The corner that had never seen the sun. Normally he didn't like to stick around and listen to the shredding and crunching and sloppy gnashing upon the corpses. But he picked his journal back up off of the chair, sat down, and scooted up closer to the bed to use it as a desk. 

By the time he had finished his account of that day, Yokoyama's head was long devoured.

Yasuda propped his chin on his hand, detached expression as he looked one last time at what his life had become for the past year. It was the last time he'd see Yokoyama - the scraps, the residue of who he had been, at least.

He wrote one more line before getting up and exiting the room, leaving the journal on the bed to whatever fate might meet it: "The final sacrifice: Yokoyama Kimitaka."

~~~~~~~

The rest of the journal was composed of charcoal drawings and blank pages. The lines had smudged over the years, bleeding and staining the facing pages with a lighter shade. But not enough that Yoko couldn't make out the forms. The small black, sperm-like blobs, in a style too familiar to Yoko having witnessed some of the artwork his groupmate had produced over the years. From tiny creatures to the final beast, all mouth and teeth and hindlegs. It had no eyes, but there, in Yasuda's depiction: in the corner of a room with an arm in its jaws, drool mixing with blood. An inkblot of predation. And it wasn't the only thing Yasuda had drawn.

Yoko quietly and patiently closed the journal, smoothing out the kinked pages before squeezing it shut tightly in his hands. He put it on the ground before him and left, walking away from the log he had been sitting on for the past couple of hours. He went back to the entrance, to look at how the building had purged its own structure, rejecting the very brick and wood that composed it. He took a deep breath and put his head in his hands, slowly breathing through his fingers until they stopped shaking. He sighed and let his arms hang to the side. Somehow, when his system calmed down, he felt relaxed - more so than he had in months. 

"Yoko! Yokoyama!"

He hadn't realized, but it had gotten quite late - the sun would set soon. Had he taken any longer to read the journal, he wouldn't have been able to discern the words or images from the dark space of night. 

"Yokoyama, help!"

Yoko jogged toward the source of the noise. Around the back of the hospital he saw Sho half in the ground, holding himself up with his elbows and hands dug into the earth before him. He looked frustrated. 

"Can you pull me out?" he asked. "It's some kind of sinkhole, just opened up while I was walking around." The vein bulged on the side of his neck and his face looked red, sweaty. He gave a quick, exhausted laugh. "I was starting to think you left without me."

Yoko walked slowly toward him, getting on his knees and edging close to look in. He could see Sho's legs pushed up against the side, digging his toes into the dirt the best he could, attempting to prop and push himself out. But he couldn't see the bottom of the hole, indistinguishable and lost in the fleeting light - maybe even nonexistent.

He moved back away and sat, cross legged, and began to tap on his lips with his fingers as he looked at the situation.

"Yokoyama," Sho struggled to say, slipping a little further down. "Could you hurry? This is getting harder." 

"No one came back," he commented.

"Yep," Sho grunted. "Yoko?"

"NTV knew we were out here and we had other places to be and no one came back," Yoko said. "Everyone left but us. Isn't that a little too convenient? Like the perfect conditions?"

"Yoko," Sho said, panic starting to set in. "Now's really not the time."

"The more you struggle, the worse it gets," he answered, looking over at the hospital. "Why that picture, Sho? Why that exact picture? Why those exact people?"

"Yoko, please! Just, grab my hand?" Sho slipped a little more.

The cut. The pipe. The glass. The crack. The ceiling. The hole. Yoko could reach out and grab Sho's hand and pull, use every ounce of his strength to dig in his heels and drag his colleague - his friend - out of the maw. He could do that, and they could go back to the front and wait, or try to wander back on the road as night approached and the temperature dropped and the animals of the forest came out. Maybe, if fate was willing to give up that easily.

Or he could wait. And Sho would be swallowed. The land could take him like it wanted.

Sho slid more, his eyes wide with panic.

Yoko continued to drum his fingers on his lips, eyebrows furrowed. This was an elaborate hoax. This was coincidence. This was real. 

"Yokoyama?"

This was a well constructed joke. This was a place where horrible men did horrible things to others under a demonic guise. This was a mouth of hell. 

He got on his knees, tentatively starting to inch his hand toward Sho, who had dug in his fingernails and was ripping the grass and mud as his chin rested on the edge of the hole, his breath ragged. Yoko was starting to feel a pressure in his chest - not at the idea of Sho literally slipping out of his grasp to a possible death, but at the cost of interfering with all that had aligned. After all, sinkholes happened. Nothing could be done about that.

And yet, he knew better. Didn't he? And all day long he had been in the right place at the right time, stepping in to keep his friend from harm. That couldn't be so easily ignored.

Everything at once seemed plausible and right, and equally imagined and wrong. The only clear truth was that fate was tired of being tempted. 

Sho's chin slipped below the edge, his eyes pleading.

Yoko shook his head in confusion, hesitating, slowly stretching out and putting his hand on top of Sho's. A pull and he was saved, a push and maybe finally the van would come. There wasn't anything he could do about it. Forces outside of himself got what they wanted; one way or another, fate was going to win.

"Yoko?"

He looked down his nose, meeting Sho's eyes - soft smile in response to the other's panicked grunts. "Don't worry, Sho," he said. "I'll do the right thing."


End file.
